Night Owl Cards

What time of day do you write your blog posts? For the last six or seven years, I've written the posts for Night Owl Cards in the afternoon, somewhere between 2-5 p.m., usually. I've done this for so long it's become ritual and the perfect time for me to write. That's all going to change starting tomorrow. My work shift is changing. The shift change will impact my life in a variety of ways, from when I see my family to when I eat. But the important part for the blog is: when will I write? Beginning on Tuesday, the time of day when I would usually write, I will be working. So now I have to find another time to write. Man, that will be weird. There are a few possibilities and I've already picked one, but let's go through them just for fun. Post in the morning as I will be getting up a couple hours earlier now There is not a chance in hell I will be doing this. If you want anything coherent coming out of this blog you don't want me to post in t...

It's all in the way you look at it. Like just about everything in life, a repack box can be praised or ridiculed. You can seek out the negative. It's very easy to do, particularly when Fairfield hides the less desirable packs so they are not viewable from the outside. So you could focus on the repack's weak points. It's bound to include a pack or two of some version of the lifeless, metalic-looking Prizm. Grown men in wordless laundry on a set that is from either 2012 or 2013. Who knows? And, yeah, you could emphasize that every repack seems to contain multiple packs of Panini Triple Play, including those useless puzzle pieces. You'll scare plenty of collectors away with that rant. Also, there are lots of packs of cards from sets that either I don't need or don't want, like 2015 and 2016 Topps flagship. The box is filled with collecting incidentals. But I find that after I'm all done opening the repack packs and sorting through what ...

I don't know why I just wrote that. I'm not telling you to do that. I think that when I'm done writing this someone will think that I am implying that. But I'm not. Talking to humans is good. Getting fresh air is good. Getting lost in traffic is good. Spending too much for parking is good. Standing next to sweaty, unshaven people named Frank is good. ... Oh, gosh, there I go implying. So, anyway, The National has come and gone again and I didn't go anywhere again. But I do have new cards. How do I do that? I stay inside and don't interact with people, silly. OK, seriously, I get new cards every year at the same time people are journeying to The National because my birthday happens to be a couple of weeks before The National. People give me cash for my birthday, I order cards for my birthday, I wait for the cards to arrive, and they usually show up right after The National wraps up. It's very convenient. And when I think about hotel room costs an...

I put a 40-inch NFL roundup in the newspaper last night. For you people who don't speak "column inches," that's around 1,320 words. That's a tremendous amount of words for a sport whose season ended 23 days ago. But I've learned over the last few years that football, particularly the NFL, never ends. It shows up on the wire, on TV reports, everywhere, around the calendar. I'm trying to think of a month in which the NFL doesn't broadcast itself: June, maybe. There doesn't seem to be much NFL news in June. That's about it. (You could probably say the same for baseball, although the baseball news is pretty slow in parts of December and January. But I'm never ready for baseball to end, so seeing offseason baseball news is never a bother). I'm probably contributing to the ubiquitous NFL info glut by publishing a post that features mostly NFL cards. I recently received a few cards each from readers Chris and Henry. And NFL cards wer...

Here's a question for you. Would you rather receive cards in the mail that are a surprise or directly off your want list? As usual, I like both ways. It's the reason I continue to buy packs and also post a detailed want list. I want what I want but surprise me. You'll see a semi-surprise package soon, but right now I want to praise some cards that I received that were expected -- because they are on my want list. I received a couple of PWE's recently from two different collectors. One is Chris from Twitter. This has to be the 4th or 5 envelope he's sent. The other is Mark from My Best Friend Collects Chipper Jones . I could tell as soon as I pulled the cards from the envelopes that people have been checking my want list. Some cards from Mark first: These are needs from the 1995 Topps Archives set. I've mentioned many times that my want list for this set is not correct, but these three were definite wants. One day -- probably when I think I ha...